Lexington and Concord both claim last word on first shot

Local historians like Susan Bennett, executive director of the Lexington Historical Society, and David Wood, curator of the Concord Museum, continue to debate the question: Where was “the shot heard round the world” actually fired? Lexington or Concord?

By Samantha Allen/Wicked Local Lexington

Wicked Local

By Samantha Allen/Wicked Local Lexington

Posted Jul. 29, 2011 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jul 29, 2011 at 12:28 PM

By Samantha Allen/Wicked Local Lexington

Posted Jul. 29, 2011 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jul 29, 2011 at 12:28 PM

Lexington

» Social News

“The shot heard round the world goes back to the [Emerson] poem about the early hours of the Revolution and I do think it refers to Concord — but that’s just creative historical license,” said Susan Bennett, executive director of the Lexington Historical Society.

Therein lies a point of contention for local historians like Bennett and David Wood, curator of the Concord Museum, who continue to debate the question: Where was “the shot heard round the world” actually fired? Lexington or Concord?

This much is beyond dispute. In the early morning hours of April 19, 1775, a shot was fired on the Lexington Common. To this day, historians still don’t know who pulled the trigger. Whoever fired first, many shots followed, leaving eight members of the Lexington Militia dead on what has come to be known as the Battle Green.

But then, renowned transcendentalist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Concord resident, published a poem in 1836 that would brew a controversy that lives on today. The line in his “Concord Hymn” reads: “By the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to April’s breeze unfurled. Here once the embattled farmers stood, and fired the shot heard round the world.”

For Concordians, there is no doubt — the shot was fired at Concord’s Old North Bridge. Emerson’s famous line was even engraved into the base of the Concord Minute Man statue.

No one questions that the first shot of the Revolutionary War was fired in Lexington. And no one disagrees that Emerson was writing about Concord when he coined the prestigious phrase. What’s open to interpretation is which shot is the more significant, and therefore worthy of the moniker “shot heard round the world.”

The debate has raged on over the years, dividing the two historically linked communities.

To this day, Lexington and Concord refuse to celebrate Patriots’ Day conjointly. According to Wood, the last time was in 1824 when French Gen. Marquis de Lafayette’s traveled to the United States and visited both towns. The two towns wanted to claim the “first shot” right then and have since never looked back.

Lexington and Concord couldn’t even put the argument aside when President Ulysses S. Grant came to visit for a Union celebration in 1850. “Poor President Grant had to go back and forth,” Wood said.

“To be honest, I think it’s a meaningless debate. Anyone who cares about history will not be focusing on a shorthand for what happened where but will look for the deeper sense,” Bennett said, downplaying the dispute, although she still claims that of course the first shot, and the “shot heard round the world,” occurred on the Lexington Green.

Page 2 of 2 - Wood said this debate frustrates him, but for other reasons.

“There is a downside to this otherwise amusing local squabble,” Wood said. Credit isn’t being given where credit is due, he said — to the rest of Massachusetts.

“The debate is completely misplaced,” Wood said, “and every town in Middlesex County can have a share of events on that day in April.”